


that i will see the light

by RoyalHeather



Series: before there was red vs. blue there was project freelancer [16]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6510154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyalHeather/pseuds/RoyalHeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>York realizes his feelings for North.</p><p>It's too little, too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that i will see the light

It’s raining again.

York has been assured by locals that this is an unusually wet summer (‘although really,’ they say, with significant looks at each other, ‘it’s been like this ever since the War’), and that would be his luck, wouldn’t it. Or rather, the end of his luck. Better lucky than good, he’d once told Wash, and for once in his life he might actually have to try to be the latter.

Then again, he’s got D. He doesn’t need luck –

 _Watch your eight,_ snaps D.

 _Thanks,_ says York, and twists around to elbow the smuggler behind him in the face. She falls with a howl, knife clattering to the ground, blood streaming from between the hands clutched to her face. “Trying to sneak up on me?” he says.

“Fug you,” she sputters through the blood. “You owe ud -”

“Yeah, yeah.” York scoops up the knife from the ground, the movement tugging on the almost-healed hole in his stomach, and spins it in his fingers. “I don’t owe you shit.”

“Yed you do.” Panting, she pushes herself back up into sitting, crimson smeared over her face. “Duh goods, you said you’d deliber dem -”

“And I did.”

“Dey were cubpletely unusable!”

“Not my problem.” The rain continues to drum down around them in this out of the way alley, a warm rain that intensifies the stink of garbage and city. York stares down at the smuggler dispassionately. She can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen. She’s just a kid. Tossing the knife into a dumpster, York pulls out a pistol from his thigh holster.

 _Are you sure?_ asks D.

 _Depends,_ says York. _Are you?_

_Reasonably._

York cocks the gun and points it at her. She goes very still, face stark white under the blood. “Please,” she chokes, “please, id’s nod be, I just follow orders, id’s nod by fault -”

“And do your orders include going back to your boss and telling him where I am?”

“No,” she lies, shaking.

York pulls the trigger.

She falls backwards, red spurting out of the back of her head and splattering over the pavement. The rain pounds it away into bloody trails in seconds, sending it swirling into the storm drain. The only thing York’s feeling is a distinct lack of any feeling at all.

 _North wouldn’t have approved,_ he thinks numbly, returning the gun to its holster.

 _North’s not here,_ D reminds him.

_I’m aware._

_Your breathing and heart rate are accelerated._

So they are. York tries to regulate his breathing and decide what to do with the smuggler’s body.

 _Dumpster,_ suggests D. _Then flee the scene._

 _I – I can’t do that,_ says York, with an uneasy stirring of remorse. _She’s just a kid, someone one should know…_

 _It’s a little late for compassion,_ snaps D. _You were willing to compromise your morals to avoid detection, why does that stop now?_

York doesn’t have an answer, so he hefts the smuggler up in his arms (god, she’s so light, she’s the same age Connie was) and lowers her gently into the nearest dumpster. When he closes the lid it thuds with all the hollow dullness of a coffin lid.

 _You think about North a lot,_ observes D, having followed his own train of thought.

Thinking about North hurts, but then again everything hurts, and York would rather think about North than Connie. _Yeah, I do,_ he says. _So what?_

D does not respond, and the rain pours down as merciless as ever.

And now York is kneeling in front of a convenience store door, lockpicking kit in hand, and he doesn’t remember how he got there. But he’s not concerned about that, because it means D took over, and honestly sometimes it’s nice to go away and let someone else drive.

 _Why are we here?_ he says, preparing to pick the lock. Not complaining, just asking.

_You need food._

_Okay._

He’s halfway through picking the lock when a woman behind him shouts, “All right, freeze!”

A cop. She can’t be too much of a threat, or D would have warned him. “Oh…” he says, slipping on the jaunty, careless tone like a mask. “Sorry, officer, I, uh – lost my keys to my shop here, and I was trying to figure out a way, to…” (he’s slipping, he knows, he can’t keep it up) “… you know, um…”

“You never were a very good liar, York,” she says, with an amusement he’s never heard from her before.

It’s like an electric shock in the deepest parts of his core, like being submerged in cold crystal-clear water. “York,” he says. “Haven’t been called York in a really long time.” He looks over his shoulder at Tex, at the gun in her hands, at the deep scratches and scuffs and scorch marks on her armor. “Hello, _Allison._ ”

\--

They end up talking. They talk a _lot._

“How’s Wash?” York asks.

“On active duty,” says Tex. “They’ve got him hunting down the Meta and anyone else that went rogue.”

“Huh,” says York. “I thought the AI they put in him –”

“Epsilon,” say D and Tex in unison.

“Epsilon, yeah. I thought it fried his brain.”

When Tex speaks, her voice is ripe with cynicism. “Never said it didn’t.”

“Oh.” York takes a moment to mourn what has happened to bright naïve Wash, because it will never leave him, he knows. “What about North?”

“On the run with South. Not sure what their MO is. They were hopping from system to system in the Outer Colonies for a while, but last I heard they’ve moved to New Carthage.”

“When was that?”

“Recent. Like, a couple days ago.”

“Mm.”

He knows better than to ask about Carolina.

\--

 _You know,_ says York, laying awake that night (his last night in Africa, his last night on _Earth_ , before he leaves with Tex), _New Carthage is an Inner Colony. We could get there in a week, tops._

D is silent for a moment. _You intend to visit North?_

 _I – yeah, it’d be nice to see him, yeah._ When D doesn’t respond, York feels a stirring of apprehension in his gut. _Do you think it’s a bad idea?_

 _No,_ says D, sounding almost surprised. _I believe it to be a good one, actually._

Hope, or a rough approximation of it, rises within York. _You do?_

 _Yes. The longer you spend anywhere, the easier it will be for interested parties to find you. Leaving Earth would alleviate that. In addition –_ and he hesitates, a most un-D-like action.

_In addition, what?_

D does not want to answer the question directly. _You want to see him, don’t you._

 _I do._ York stares up at the bare concrete ceiling through his visor, the tightness in his chest so great he can hardly bear it. _I fucking miss him, D._

He does not think about his last memory of North, or his first, or even of the time they kissed. Instead he remembers a night with both of them slumped next to each other in post-exercise exhaustion, a Grifball game playing that neither of them are watching. The comforting weight of North’s shoulder against his. The familiar, easy sound of his breathing. Warmth and wrung-out muscles and human contact…

Longing hits him like a punch in the gut. He _wants_ it. He wants _North._

And it comes to him so clearly it’s painful, he can’t believe he hasn’t seen it before. It was all there, all along, drunken hugs and midnight confessions and North at the side of his hospital bed, North at his side in combat, North at his side to let him back onto the _Invention,_ North at his side always –

 _Holy shit, D,_ he whispers, because what else can he do? _D, I didn’t – I didn’t realize –_

_I know._

_Was it obvious?_

_Absurdly._

_Do – do you think he –_

_It is entirely possible._

_Holy shit,_ he breathes again. _D, after – after this thing with Tex, right, after we finish this up, we’re going straight to New Carthage and we’re gonna see North again and –_ and I’m going to kiss him, I’m going to punch myself in the face, I’m going to hang onto his big stupid warm body and never let him go –

D laughs, tinny but kind, and York is so amazed at this little epiphany that Tex could shoot him in the back and he wouldn’t even notice. _D,_ he says, _it’s gonna get better, buddy. I promise._

 _I don’t believe you._ But D sounds confident all the same.


End file.
